think it is Satan that lulls me asleep when anybody comes to talk to me on the best things." She lay awhile and gasped for breath, and repeated that verse of Fowler's

"Jesus, o'er the billows steer me,

Be my Pilot in each storm;

Hold me fast and keep me near Thee,

For Thou knowest I'm but a worm."

"But a worm! But a worm! I am but a worm!" On observing Gadsby's Hymn Book she said, "How I have wanted that book. There is a hymn there very sweet to me. I can find it." Her poor trembling dying fingers turned leaf after leaf, and pointed to hymn 229.-"That's it."

"How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,
Is laid for your faith in His excellent word;
What more can He say than to you He has said-
You who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?"

The last verse appeared precious to her

"The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose

I will not, I will not desert to his foes;

That soul, though all hell shall endeavour to shake,
I'll never, no, never, no, never forsake."

She said, "How beautiful!

Toplady's hymn—

How nice!" and then repeated part of

"While I draw this fleeting breath,

When my eye-strings break in death;

When I soar to worlds unknown,

See Thee on Thy judgment-throne:
Rock of Ages, shelter me,

Let me hide myself in Thee.".

After resting a little time she asked for the children, and kissed them, and gave directions about her little girl's hair; feeling now her end was near. I asked her if she had any hope; she replied with some confidence, "Oh, yes, dear; I think the Lord will receive me. I could tell you a great deal if I had breath," and added, as her breath permitted, "Hope-thou -in-God." On my entering the room after a few minutes' absence, she said, "Will you have a little prayer-meeting, dear?" We gathered around her bed for that purpose. She said, "Read loud, dear, because I am so deaf." After reading Psalm cxxiii. 3, "Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us," she muttered quietly, "Yes, yes.' Immediately a slight rattling was heard in the throat, and her eyes rolled around and rested on me, when

"Two gentle sighs, her spirit broke

We scarce could say she's gone,
Before her ransomed spirit took
Its seat before the throne."

Thus passed away one of the most kind and affectionate of wives, tender and loving mothers, sympathizing and sincere friends the world has ever known. She was interred in Dorking Cemetery, October 2nd, aged 40 years. Mr. Allmett preached her funeral sermon on Sunday, October 4th, and commenced by saying-"Dear friends, we are met under very

solemn circumstances to-day. The Lord hath seen fit to remove from amongst us our friend Mrs. Curry; and I feel it a very solemn occasion. This day three months she occupied her seat with us, hearty and well, probably no thought of death; but now the wife, the mother, and the friend lies buried in yonder cemetery. Before her death she said many things to others that she did not say to me. I had not heard of her illness, but I felt my mind particularly exercised, and a spirit of prayer going out to the Lord on behalf of my friend her husband, and he was continually on my mind. When I heard of Mrs. Curry's illness, I went to see her, and I asked the state of her mind. She said it was 'dark.' I said, 'What, is there no hope?' She said, 'Oh, yes! Mr. Allmett, I have a hope; for that text has been very sweet to me- "This God is our God for ever and ever, and will be our Guide even unto death.": And from that text which our friend found comfort in I propose addressing you this morning; for I can safely say, that from the moment the words came out of her mouth to the present they have not left my 'This God is our God for ever and ever.' mind. That the dear departed is gone to her rest I cannot doubt; not only from the hopeful circumstances which surrounded her death, but from the unctuous and gracious way which the testimony she gave was commended to the conscience, and most of all the force and power with which several Scriptures have come to the mind. The wicked is driven away in his wickedness, but the righteous hath "hope in his death." Prov. xiv. 32, have especially confirmed and established me in the belief that she is safely landed "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." The Lord is not always pleased to gratify the fond wish of surviving friends in granting what is called "a triumphant death-bed." It is very blessed when bestowed, but we have no scriptural warrant to expect it. The blessed Jesus Himself said, "It is finished," bowed His head, and gave up the ghost. The Lord is the Hope of His people (Joel iii. 16), whether living or dying. "Blessed is the man whose hope the Lord is" (Jer. xvii. 7). "We sorrow not, even as others which have no hope; but if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him" (1 Thess. xiii. 14). Should it be our happy privilege to get to glory, we shall doubtlessly find many there we never expected to find there, and we shall find many absent who we expected to be present. Who knows how far a hypocrite may go and yet be a hypocrite? or how shallow the evidence of spiritual life in a child of God, and yet be a child of God? "Nevertheless, the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are His." "This people have I formed for myself, and they shall shew forth my praise." WALTER CURRY.

A REMARKABLE SERMON.-The Christian Book Society [22, King William Street, Strand, London, W.C.] have just issued a cheap reprint of a remarkable sermon preached nearly forty years ago at St. Thomas's Church, Bristol, by the Rev. T. F. Jennings, then curate of the parish, and till lately curate of Emmanuel Church, Weston-super-Mare, on the occasion of the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill, in March, 1829, entitled "England's Last Effort." In an appendix are given some arguments by the late Sir R. Peel, written in reply to the sermon after the perusal of a copy of it presented to him by the late Richard Hart Davis, Esq., then M.P. for Bristol. The sermon turns out to have been almost prophetical of the future increase of Roman Catholicism.

THE DECEITFULNESS AND THE DANGER OF RICHES. SOME time ago it was my mournful duty to be much with a gentleman (the second son of a wealthy baronet, and himself the possessor of large landed property) whose mind was to a considerable extent shaken. His distress of mind was so indescribably and dreadfully great that it was necessary to exercise the most careful and constant watch over him. In vain I endeavoured to point him to the sinner's Hope, the only Refuge for the guilty and lost. Every argument he would repel, admitting that God could indeed be gracious, but not to such a wretch as he felt himself to be. At times he would ask me to look out of his sitting-room window from which a most delightful prospect could be obtained, and ask if I did not think the trees and flowers looked blighted, and the sun itself gloomy and sad. I would then tell him of my own feelings with respect to the lovely objects which lay scattered before us, and say that it was being viewed through the medium of his own despairing mind that caused them to appear to him in such gloomy colours. His views of the so-called pleasures of society were most striking and solemn, and he would wonder how men could sport so heedlessly on the brink of ruin, with God unsought, the soul unsaved, and a dreadful though unheeded eternity before them. He would remark, "Hell is a reality, a dreadful and dreaded reality. I feel as if suspended over it by a hair, and apprehend the sword of God's vengeance ready at any moment to descend and cut that hair.” Over his careless relations he mourned with a most bitter lamentation, for the ties of natural affection were strong, and, like the rich man in the Gospels, he feared lest they also should come into the same state of torment. Sometimes he would exclaim, "Oh, that I had been born a poor man! How shall I answer for misused wealth, abused influence, and for indulging my own accursed sinful inclinations, instead of devoting all to the glory of God, and (oh, horrid thought!) living entirely to self under the guise of a Christian name?" On one occasion, seeing a paragraph in a newspaper touching a visit which his nephew (a college friend of the Prince of Wales) had been invited to make to Windsor Castle, I took the paper to his room and read it to him, but instead of being gratified, as I supposed he might be, he called out "Sad! sad! sad! Poor boy! the notice of princes will only lift him above himself, and oh, awful thought! to rise to the heights of earthly glory and sink from thence into the depths of hell."

But to come to the last touching scene of my connexion with him. His friends had resolved to place him under the care of an eminent medical practitioner near London, in hopes that the change might prove beneficial to mind and body. He begged me to remain in the room with him until the arrangements for his removal were gone through, and showed great affection and gratitude for any little attention and sympathy which had been shown him. It was necessary that he should be examined by two medical men, and a certificate, touching the state of his mind, forwarded by them to the party under whose care he was to be placed. When the first medical man came, he simply answered the questions put to him, and allowed him to depart without making any particular observations; and then the second came, a young and interesting-looking gentleman. He was rather slow in answering his inquiries, and seemed to regard him with a look of mingled sternness and pity. On his moving towards the door to retire, the patient rose from his seat, and, fixing his bright piercing

eye on his examiner, he said, with an earnestness and an awe which the writer will never forget, "Dr. E— do you really wish to know what ails me?" On being answered in the affirmative, he said, "Then I will tell you;" and after a solemn pause, he added, "I have been all my life long building on a rotten foundation; God has swept it from under me, and here I am left in the horrors of misery and despair. And, Doctor E-," he continued, "I fear you also are building on a like false foundation; and, if so, be assured the time will come when God will sweep it from under you, as He has done to me." The Doctor looked astonished, said, "I hope not," and withdrew. In a few hours after the carriage that was to convey him to the railway-station drove up to the door. With a mournful heart I bade the sufferer farewell; and many a time since have I begged of the Lord, if it were His sovereign will, to break his mental and spiritual bonds, and bring him, like that favoured one of old, to His dear feet, clothed, and in his right mind.

RUTHERFORD'S LOVE FOR JESUS' COMING.

HEAR the soul-stirring breathings of Rutherford for the coming of Jesus; though dead, his words speak in life-inspiring tones to the saints now looking for, and so near the revelation of the "Just One."

"The Lord hath told you what ye should be doing until He comes; wait and hasten, said Peter, for the coming of your Lord; all is night here, in respect of ignorance and daily-ensuing troubles, one always making way to another, as the ninth wave of the sea to the tenth! Therefore, sigh and long for the dawning of that morning, and the breaking of that day of the coming of the Son of man, when the shadows shall flee away. Persuade yourselves that the King is coming; read His letter sent before Him (Rev. xxii. 20). Behold, I come quickly,' wait for the wearied night-watch, for the breaking of the eastern sky, and think that ye have not a morrow; as the wise father said, who, being invited against tomorrow to dine with some friends, answered, 'These many days I have had no morrow at all.'

"I half call His absence cruel, and the mask and veil on Christ's face a cruel covering that hideth such a fair face from a sin-sick soul. I dare not challenge Himself, but His absence is a mountain of iron upon my heavy heart. Oh, when shall we meet? Oh, how long to the dawning of the marriage-day! O sweet Lord Jesus, take wide steps! O my Lord, come over the mountain at one stride! O my Beloved, flee like a roe or a young hart, on the mountains of separation. Oh, that He would fold the heavens together like an old cloak, and shovel time and days out of the way, and make ready in haste the Lamb's wife for her Husband. Since He looked upon me my heart is not mine own; He hath run away to heaven with it.

"O day, dawn! O time, run fast! O Bridegroom, post, post away, that we may meet! O heavens, cleave in two, that that bright face and head may set itself through the clouds! Oh that the corn were ripe, and this world prepared for His sickle!

"The wife of youth, that wants her husband some years, and expects he shall return to her from overlands, is often on the sea-shore; every ship is her new joy; her heart loves the wind that shall bring him home. She

asks at every passenger news, 'Oh, saw ye my husband? When shall he come? Is he shipped for a return?' Every ship that carrieth not her husband is the breaking of her heart."

LIFE, LIGHT, AND LOVE; OR, VISITS TO AND FROM JESUS.

BELOVED IN THE LORD,-Having kept you so long waiting for a letter, I am almost ashamed to write now; but I know that you will not construe my silence into indifference. Even now, though I have resolved in my mind to write you an epistle in love of love, yet I do not feel that I shall be able to communicate anything that will either glorify the Lord or edify your spiritual mind. I would gladly obey the sacred command, and prophesy unto the wind to blow upon the Lord's garden that the spices thereof might flow out, but I find that without Him I can do nothing. The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak. Nevertheless, we read of the worthies and valiants of old, that out of weakness they were made strong, and I believe that it is just so now with the Lord's people, for we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God," and "we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us : we have nothing of a spiritual nature but what we receive at the bountiful hands of our covenant God as a free-grace gift; and we well know that "Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning;" for "He is in our mind, and who can turn Him?" and "If God be for us, who can be against us?" All beings, things, and circumstances must work together for our temporal, spiritual, and eternal good and

""Tis His delight to make us bless'd,
And live upon His love."

so that

He will not let us live upon creatures or self, but will bring us to say experimentally with Paul, "To me to live is Christ: and to die is gain: and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." This was the climax of Paul's joy, the consummation of his delight-" Who loved me, and gave Himself for me." It would have afforded the great apostle no joy, it would have caused him no delight, it would have yielded him neither comfort, consolation, nor satisfaction to have known that Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, had he not have been able to say, "Who loved ME, and gave Himself for ME." This is at once losing sight of all persons but the Lord, and of all creatures that are interested in His great love wherewith He loved us, but the individual ME. The lines of Hart find a feeling echo in the minds of all God's children—

Let the soul be once persuaded of this fact, convinced of this blessed reality, assured of this precious free-grace mercy, and how it will rise into the pure atmosphere of love, and inhale the air of heaven! It will then sit